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One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

Ken Kesey

Part I, continued

Part III

Summary

The tables are turned in the ward as everyone watches Ratched in the
glassed-in Nurses’ Station after her outburst. She cannot escape the
patients’ stares, just as they can never escape hers. Ratched strains
to regain composure for the staff meeting she called. Bromden says
the fog is completely gone now. He always cleans the staff room
during meetings, but after his vote, he fears that everyone will realize
that he is not really deaf. He goes anyway, knowing that Ratched
is suspicious of him. Doctor Spivey attempts to get the meeting
started while Ratched uses silence to assert her power. The staff,
misreading Ratched’s silence as approval, decides that McMurphy
is potentially violent and should be sent to the Disturbed ward.
Ratched disagrees; she declares instead that McMurphy is an ordinary
man, subject to the same fears and timidity as the others. Since
McMurphy is committed, Ratched knows she can control how long he
spends in the hospital, and she decides to take her time with him.

Ratched assigns McMurphy the chore of cleaning the latrines, but
he continues to nettle her in every way possible. Bromden marvels
that the Combine has not broken him. One night, he wakes up and
looks out the window and gazes in wonder at the countryside. Bromden
observes a dog sniffing around the building and a flock of geese
flying overhead. He watches as the dog runs toward the highway,
where the headlights of an oncoming car are visible. During the Group
Meetings, the patients begin to air their long-silent complaints
about the rules.

The ward is taken to the hospital’s pool to swim. McMurphy learns
from the patient serving as the lifeguard that someone who is committed
to the hospital is released only at the discretion of the staff.
McMurphy had believed he could leave as soon as he served the time
remaining on his work farm sentence. Cowed by his new knowledge,
he behaves more conservatively around Ratched. During the next Group
Meeting, Cheswick brings up the problem of cigarette rationing,
but McMurphy does not support him. Ratched sends Cheswick to Disturbed
for a while. After he returns, on the way to the pool, Cheswick
tells McMurphy that he understands why McMurphy no longer rebels
against Ratched. That day, Cheswick’s fingers get stuck in the pool’s
drain and he drowns in what is possibly a suicide.

Sefelt, who has epilepsy, has a seizure on the floor.
Fredrickson, also an epileptic, always takes Sefelt’s medication.
Ratched takes the opportunity to demonstrate the importance of following
her advice and not “acting foolish.” McMurphy, who has never seen
an epileptic seizure, is very disturbed by the whole scenario. Bromden
notes that McMurphy is beginning to get a “haggard, puzzled look
of pressure” on his face.

Harding’s wife comes for a brief visit. Harding mocks
her poor grammar, and she says she wishes his limp-wristed friends
would stop coming to their house to ask about him. After she leaves, McMurphy
angrily erupts when Harding asks for his opinion of her, saying,
“I’ve got worries of my own without getting hooked with yours. So
just quit!” The patients are then taken to get chest X rays for
TB, and McMurphy learns that Ratched can send anyone she wants for
electroshock therapy and even a lobotomy in some cases, despite
the fact that both practices are outdated. McMurphy tells the other
patients that he knows now why they encouraged his rebellion without
informing him about the consequences. He now understands that they
submit to her not only because she is able to authorize these treatments,
but also because she determines when they can leave the hospital.
Harding informs him that, to the contrary, Scanlon is the only Acute
aside from McMurphy who is committed. The rest of the Acutes are
in the hospital voluntarily and could leave whenever they chose.
McMurphy, completely perplexed, asks Billy Bibbit why he chooses
to stay when he could be outside driving a convertible and romancing
pretty girls. Billy Bibbit begins to cry and shouts that he and
the others are not as big, strong, and brave as McMurphy.

McMurphy buys three cartons of cigarettes at the canteen.
After the Group Meeting, Ratched announces that she and Doctor Spivey think
the patients should be punished for their insubordination against
the cleaning schedule a few weeks before. Since they did not apologize
or show any remorse, she and Spivey have decided to take away the
second game room. Everyone, including the Chronics, turns to see
how McMurphy reacts. McMurphy smiles and tips his hat. Ratched thinks
that she has regained control, but, after the meeting, McMurphy
calmly walks to the glass-enclosed Nurses’ Station where she is
sitting. He says that he wants some of his cigarettes and punches
his hand through the glass. He claims that the glass was so spotless
that he forgot it was even there.

Analysis

The staff meeting illustrates the unbelievable extent
of Nurse Ratched’s power in the hospital, even in the face of disruptions
by a clever, sharp-witted patient like McMurphy. After McMurphy learns
of her true power—her responsibility for his release and her ability
to administer inhumane treatments—no one dares deny her authority
even after her hysterical fit. She quickly reconsolidates her power
over the staff before they can doubt her. Ratched’s actions indicate
her clear-thinking, premeditated approach to dealing with McMurphy.
She chooses to keep McMurphy on the ward to prevent him from attaining
the status of a martyr. Moreover, she realizes that sending him
off the ward would be tantamount to declaring defeat. Ratched would
rather confront McMurphy directly. She is comforted to know that
she has complete control over his future, and that once he realizes
it too, he will not dare to disobey her.

Up to this point, McMurphy’s rebellions have largely
been self-motivated, although they have ended up benefiting others
as well. Now the other men are discovering their own individual
desires and begin to follow his lead: Cheswick demands that the
rationing of cigarettes be ended, and Bromden stops taking his sleeping pill. Bromden’s
transformation from a pretend deaf-mute into a man who can think
for himself results from his observation and admiration of McMurphy.
Although Bromden is physically much larger than McMurphy, he sees
himself as weak and small, and he marvels at McMurphy’s strength.
He realizes that McMurphy’s power comes from his ability to “be
who he is,” to maintain his individuality within the Combine’s institutions.
With this new knowledge, Bromden and the other patients slowly resurrect
their suppressed individuality.

Bromden’s realization, upon looking out the window, that
the hospital is in the countryside symbolizes the broadening of
his perceptual abilities under McMurphy’s influence. He watches
as animals interact with man-made creations. This scene of nature
versus machine echoes the situation occurring within the hospital’s
walls. The geese belong entirely to the wild, undomesticated world.
The car represents the oppressive, mechanized modern society. The
dog, as a domesticated creature, is situated in between. Bromden
notes that the dog and the car are headed for “the same spot of
pavement.” The implication is that the dog will run into the car
and be killed by the overwhelmingly larger machine. This image signifies that
when one tries to defy modern society’s mechanized, conventional
imperatives, one runs the risk of experiencing annihilation rather
than victory.

After McMurphy learns that Ratched will determine when
he can leave the hospital, he chooses to conform to the hospital’s
set of norms and rules. McMurphy doesn’t yet understand the responsibility
that he has assumed by serving as the ward’s most effective teacher
of resistance. This responsibility becomes apparent when Cheswick
dies. McMurphy realizes that by ending his rebellion and conforming
to Ratched’s ways to save himself, he has become complicit with
the destructive Combine.

The knowledge of his own complacency with the Combine strikes
McMurphy strongly and influences him to resume his rebellion, although
with a new sense of the ramifications of rebellion. He now acts
with the full knowledge of his situation and the punishments that
Ratched may inflict on him in response to his continued opposition.
He now knowingly assumes the role of leader that he naively assumed
earlier. Rather than being a selfish action, his resumed rebellion
is calculated to benefit the other patients. In addition, McMurphy
no longer relies on humorous nettling as his weapon in this rebellion.
McMurphy’s strength becomes less mental and more corporeal. Breaking
the window is his first act of violence—far more serious than his
humorous jabs. Moreover, the glass, which is kept so spotless that
it is almost invisible, represents the control Nurse Ratched has
over the patients; it is so deviously subtle that they sometimes
forget it is there. By breaking the glass, McMurphy reminds the
other patients that her power over them is always present, while
simultaneously suggesting that their knowledge of her power renders
that power breakable.

To weaken the structure of such an (intricate) attack on a borderline genius and his family 1st you must be more committed than more than 5 minds at play. You must do whatever it takes to luir you (snails) out of hiding you cowards are what entertains me. Now that you and I both know undeniably the web I woven has drawn you all into a trap, as the structure colapses on all of you. If you can heed warnings and believe mis information note that this is a game of chess, so to speak. And you hiding in the night served as a darker place for me t